New allegations indicate that American civilian military
leadership may have used an off-book quasi-military team
to address political issues, placing those concerns
above securing peace in the region, RAW STORY has
learned.

Three U.S. intelligence sources and a source close to
the United Nations Security Council say that the
Pentagon civilian leadership under the guidance of
Stephen Cambone, appointed to lead Defense Department
intelligence in March 2003, dispatched a series of “off
book” missions out of the ultra-secretive Office of
Special Plans (OSP). The team was tasked to secure the
following in order of priority: fallen Navy pilot Scott
Speicher, WMD and Saddam Hussein.

While it is known that an authorized special operations
unit was dispatched before the invasion of Iraq with
similar objectives, sources say another team also
operated on the ground in Iraq, primarily from the
summer until the fall of 2003. This team appears to have
been composed of 4-5 men.

The Fallen Navy Pilot

Lieutenant Commander Michael “Scott” Speicher was shot
down over Iraq in 1991 during the first day of Operation
Desert Storm. He was classified as Killed in Action (KIA)
within a few months thereafter.

Sources say that in order to convince the administration
to invade Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, the discredited leader of
the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and poster boy for
neoconservative hawks, claimed that Speicher was alive
and being held as a prisoner of war.

Chalabi -- considered by many to be a con-man and
dilettante with a long history of scheming and dealings
-- spun yarn after yarn about Iraqi WMD programs to
hawks within the administration unable to find credible
evidence of WMD from their own intelligence community in
order to support a pre-emptive war.

Sources from the US and foreign intelligence communities
found Chalabi’s claims of WMD false, but administration
hawks pushed for invasion using him as one of the
primary sources. The New York Times’ Judith Miller also
relied heavily on Chalabi for single-source information
about a fictional Iraqi WMD program.

Sources say that along with promises of Speicher and WMD,
Chalabi also promised to deliver Iraqi tribal chieftains
to support coalition forces on the ground. So called
“swoop” teams of special ops forces deployed in the
region prior to the invasion were assured that support
on the ground from tribal leaders would be ready upon
the arrival of US and British forces. But like the
claims of WMD, no such support materialized.

Task Force 20 and other units

The primary operational team <http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=244325&;>
responsible for the early activity on the ground in Iraq
was Task Force 20, which was comprised of CIA, FBI,
Green Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from
the Navy's Special Warfare Development Group. Task Force
20 consisted of roughly a 40-man assault team and a
private aviation unit provided by Special Operations
Command. Sources believe this was the team tasked with
the three objectives of securing the fallen pilot, the
weapons, and the dictator.

Other groups operating at this same time included the
75th Exploitation Task Force, a unit of roughly 900
specialists, made up of smaller tactical teams, who
followed on the heels of TF20. Judith Miller was
embedded with one of the units of the 75th.

Sources say the Office of Special Plans deployed several
extra-legal and unapproved task force missions prior to
and after combat operations began. Under the supervision
of Doug Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the
OSP ran largely unsupervised and operated in secrecy.
According to those familiar with the plans, the off-book
missions were approved by Feith -- himself currently
under investigation <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57595-2004Sep2.html>
by the FBI for allegations of passing US secrets to
Israel and Iran -- Cambone and then-Deputy National
Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

But the lines between what were considered sanctioned
forces and those considered almost as rogue units began
to blur shortly after the invasion. Whether this was
done deliberately to misrepresent official military,
CIA, and other operations missions in the region, or
whether this confusion stems from a lack of coordination
remains unknown.

It is also difficult to establish whether or not TF20’s
various sub-teams were used by civilian leadership to
achieve other goals, not known to the primary unit.

What is, however, apparent is that the Office of Special
Plans’ teams were deployed in obscurity and on occasion
even bumped into sanctioned special ops teams, creating
a sense of unease among the various forces on the
ground.

Sources raised most concern about an alleged off-book
4-5 man team which operated in the summer through the
fall of 2003. What this team was doing and under whose
authority it operated is unclear.

Yet at least one source close to the UN Security Council
tells RAW STORY that the smaller team was acting on
behalf of Office of Special Plans and Defense Department
leadership, specifically under the guidance of Feith and
in tandem with Cambone.

Though most sources pointed to TF20 as the most likely
to have spawned the clandestine force, one intelligence
source disagreed. The source noted that by mid-2003 TF20
had been to nearly all of the major Iraqi installations
without finding any evidence <http://www.slate.com/id/2082998/>
of WMD.

One intelligence source says the Office of Special
Plans’ off-book team was using Speicher and WMD as a
pretext for whatever their real objective may have been.

Secret team looked to ‘solve’ WMD problem?

This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing
former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing
help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to
the UN Security Council says.

During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the
team, whose members who were not named by sources, is
said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and
former intelligence officers. The UN source says that
the political problem discussed had more to do with
solving the lack of WMD than anything else.

“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis,
interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start
talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi
intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in
trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there
are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”

The source said intelligence officers understood quickly
what they were being asked to do and that the assumption
was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for
coalition forces to find them.

“But the guys were thinking this is absurd because
anything put down would not pass the smell test and
could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using
Iraqi methodology,” the source added.

Former and current US intelligence officers explain that
such forensics is essential and would have in fact
proved if a weapons stash found was using Iraqi
methodology.

“A good example of how forensics is used can be found in
the recent development around enriched uranium isotopes
found on centrifuges in Iran,” one said. “Iran claimed
to have purchased the centrifuges from Pakistan, but
certain people pushing for war with Iraq were claiming
that this was evidence of Iraqis reconstituting their
nuclear weapons program. The forensics showed that the
Iranians were telling the truth and that they in fact
had purchased the items from Pakistan, a US ally.”

[andend]

FPF-fwd. - Related:

* "Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops
entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will
be grateful." - Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian,
France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting. Unbeknownst
to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate
to the meeting.

* And global warcriminal Henry Kissinger and his ilk
succeeded, but nobody apart from 'them' was 'grateful'.
On the contrary: own US troops - even with tanks -
appeared in the streets of Los Angeles: against anti-war
protesters! - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/7qh65

* 'American Military Personnel - Know Why You're Being
Sacrificed' - by Robert L. Johnson: "When I joined the
United States Marines in September of 1973, I swore an
oath..." - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/75pl3

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video &
text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General
Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* "People do not forget. They do not forget the death of
their fellows, they do not forget torture and
mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not
forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of
mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also
strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner
Harold Pinter - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/9cyeq

* Help all the troops - of whatever nationality - to
come back from abroad! - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS,
WHICH WE WERE FORCED TO PAY FOR BY TAXES - [http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm
] - We need them badly at home in many countries to
fight with us against our so called 'governments' and
their malignant managers - Url.:
http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

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